Week one - It begins

This blog is intended to be the story of my family as Mummy and Daddy (me) swap places for a period of 11 weeks. My work offers 11 weeks Paternity leave above government regulations to both Men and Women. "That's great" I hear you say, it is, but there is just one catch, the employee must be the Primary carer for the child for the period of 11 weeks. The policy is designed to get families to discuss who should return to work and challenge the notion that is should be the woman who stays home and has the career put on hold for x number of years. 

Both Louise and I are professional white collar workers and both of us are good at our jobs (humble too...), when I heard about the policy I thought that's something I'd like to try. Early on in the pregnancy we discussed it and decided that the chance for me to get to spend so much time early on in the life of our baby is too good an opportunity to miss. So having no idea about parenting we decided that we would give it a go and discuss the work arrangements going forward during the experiment.

Meet the Schofields - a little background on who we are:  

Louise and I (Chris) are early 30's professionals who grew up in rural areas, but moved to the city for Uni/Jobs (relevant in that we have very little family within 2 hrs drive). I'm a consultant that works long hours on high pressure engagements (big shout out to my work mates and client, I love my job, I really do) and Louise is a management accountant at a not for profit.

When it comes to parenting I'm best described as keen and naive. Which contrasts nicely with Louise's natural instincts and her mothering skills that know no bounds. 

Alex (the baby) was born approx 10 months ago. Alex is great baby and makes parenting a joy, My mum tells me he cries a lot less than other babies, and certainly less than I did. So that is a win. 

Alex is also a giant baby, he was over 5 kgs and has continued to grow.... 

Principles of the Blog

1. Open and honest about our experiences
2. Louise has vito power on the blog
3. Don't Judge us ->I'm new at this and life is pretty analogue
4. Update once per week
5. Entertaining over boring I.E. The blog will not be a verbatim list of things I did each day - boring. 
6. Insightful -> I hope to detail what I'm learning about parenting. 

Disclaimer - this is a work of fiction...

Anticipation

As the time ticked down and the parental leave got closer, it became realer and realer. I started to worry about my ability to actually do what my wife had made look easy for 10 months. I would notice on Saturdays, when  I would look after Alex for the morning while Louise slept in, the amount of times I would ask her advice, she would come out to intervene when Alex wouldn't settle, or wouldn't eat or would try to escape the change mat etc. 

For a long time I thought before it starts I'll pick up stuff from Louise, but the work did not ramp down, and I really can't walk away without closing out stuff. So I worked harder, longer and neglected learning more parental skills from Louise. So on the Sunday night before Louise went back to work, we both lay in bed, anxious about how Day 1 would go. Would I be calling Louise every 5 mins, would Alex get separation anxiety, would Louise have to come home, these were just the known risks, what about the unknown unknowns! Damn you Rumsfeld. 

Louise worried too, about how she was going back to a different role, how she would handle being away from Alex, changes in how things are done at work, and maintaining mental focus for 8 hours.

Day 1

I don't want to dwell on the details of the day as they are monotonous. The key milestones I was looking to hit were: Breakfast; Lunch and afternoon sleep. I'll describe the challenges and variability of meals another time. Anyway day one went about as good as it could have. The only real issue was that I left Alex in the high-chair at lunch a little bit too long, which caused him to crack up, kind of like when you are at a restaurant and it takes the waitstaff forever to bring the bill. I understand why he cracked up, I'm always screaming on the inside when that happens to me.  

Through the first week I noticed a few things:

• Babies are 100% reliant on you. It's not boring, but it's places an incredible demand on your time, the baby needs you 95% of the time (awake time) you can't really do anything, you can't even use your phone or laptop... the baby wants in on it. Just going down to hang out the washing is a gamble if the baby will crack up once you move them.

• Babies eat everything.... Alex constantly places everything in his month, this includes eating paper... The split second you look away, wham something goes in his mouth. 

• You begin to try to reason with a 10mth old.... I'm not sure why I expect Alex to understand, when you take a step back, it seems ridiculous the way I speak to him, explaining the pros and cons of eating paper.

• Babies cry, a lot. - For a baby there is a fine line between laughing and crying. When Alex is tired, and I'm playing with him, he can quickly swing between laughing and crying. This is double edged, on the negative side you need to watch how much you joke around when the baby is tired, but on the positive side, you can sometimes turn crying into laughing if you are skilled enough. 

• There is no toy - There is no distinction between toys and other things, only objects. Objects which can be discovered and ultimately chewed on. This too is double edged, it means that Alex constantly tries to play with things that I don't want him to play with e.g power supply to the laptop, but on the positive side, you don't need to buy new toys, just show him things he hasn't seen before to entertain him for hours. 

• Baby's watch you and see what you place value on, then target those things. Alex realises that I listen to a lot of radio, and use my mobile and laptop a lot, he makes a bee-line for those objects that I use the most.

• The speed at which you can do things (e.g. do the shopping, go to the park) is inversely proportional to the number of kids you have. I visited my mum as she baby sat my two nieces. We spent more time getting ready to go to the park than at the park. This is a major contrast to my professional background, it is really quiet foreign, and very frustrating.  

On Thursday Morning not long after breakfast, Alex Started throwing up, a lot. I cleaned him, myself and the lounge up, then he did it again, only this time worse. Since then both Louise and I have been violently ill. I'll write about it in more detail once we get through this... but I did learn that 10 month old baby's need to have a medical certificate to get out of swimming lessons, unfortunately I only learned this after I left the doctor and had to go back the next day to get a letter from the doctor explaining that Alex was not fit to participate in his swimming lesson. I thought this was truly weird.